[Mike Foreman] Thank you, Nathan for that overview. And as you said, we'll get to an explanation of the project more in depth in just a minute or two. We thought we would introduce the University of Virginia Institute for Engagement and Negotiation to you, to you all. Several of you we know very well and most don't. But what strikes me most about this is the good collaboration between UVA and Virginia Tech, right? That's the joke of the day, is we're going to work together on this project and come out really well. But our Institute has been around for 40 years as a part of the planning school, architecture school at UVA on Grounds. And we've had a long history of project work on really, really tough natural resource and other issues, community engagement issues. And we're excited to be a part of Virginia Tech's project here with Nathan and Alex Kinnaman. And we're just really grateful for being a part of it. And our role here is to facilitate and guide this process through four Friday afternoon workshops with all of you. We are charged to summarize the doc, summarize the work over those four sessions, produce a document which Nathan and staff can take forward for reporting out for this really good project work and grant. So that's us in a nutshell and you can always look this up on the web and ask Kelly and I any other questions that you would like and we'll be glad to answer you. Kelly, I'll turn to you for the Google Doc introduction and any notes that you'd like to provide you. [Kelly Altizer] Yeah, thanks everyone. Great to see you. I'm Kelly Altizer. I know if you've been here, if you were one of the early entrance into the meeting, you've heard me say this several times now, so stick with me, I appreciate your patience, which is that today we will be using a Google Doc. I'm going to put it again in the chat. Just it has a sign-in table at the top. We would like for you to just indicate your name, your organization, and your favorite outdoor space. I'm still thinking about mine, so I'll get it in there in a bit, a bit later in the meeting. We're going to use that same Google document to record breakout room answers. So I'll do a little bit about that later. But just to say we're going to come back to this. So if you can keep this link open, that's great. Right now we're going to go into breakout rooms just as a way to get the conversation going and get to know each other a little bit. So I'm going to pull up one more thing for the chat, which is the breakout room question. There we go, sorry, the tabs never want to move when you want them to move, right? So this is the question that we would like for you to consider in your breakout rooms. Which is, what is your organization's role in preserving, documenting, and or maintaining records regarding regional heritage. You're gonna be in a group with three or four people, depending on how many folks are in the room. I'm going to open those up in just a minute and you should see a pop up at the bottom that says join breakout room or something like that. So that's what you're going to look for in just a moment. We're going to see in rooms for about 10 min. Then we'll bring you back and chat again in the large group. So that's just a forecast what the next step is. Does anybody have any questions about that before we move to breakout rooms? Okay. [Mike Foreman] Sorry, we got a great group, an astute group on Zoom today. [Kelly Altizer] Alright, well, I'm gonna go ahead and open the breakout rooms. So you should see hopefully an invitation popping up on your end. [Kelly Altizer] Welcome back everybody. I think we have everyone back now. So I hope you had a good chance to get to know at least a few of the folks who are in the meeting with us today. I'm wondering, did anybody learn about a new organization or hear anything that surprised them in that breakout room? Anybody want to share, unmute and share what you heard? [Speaker 1] Can you repeat the question one more time? [Kelly Altizer] Yeah, no, the question was did you hear or did you learn about a new organization in your breakout room or did you hear anything that surprised you that you'd be willing to unmute and share with the group? [Speaker 1] I will not be able to recall the fullness of the museum names of the good folks that were in my group, but I did not know they existed. One is in Southwest Virginia further than I am which is really great to know. I wasn't surprised. I was more like, solidarity. We're all struggling to find funding to hire staff and like, do this work well. [Kelly Altizer] Great. Thanks, [Speaker 1]. Anyone else willing to share? Yeah, go ahead. [Speaker 2] I learned that from [participant] that Thurgood Marshall has a has a relationship to the Calfee school which I did not know about. So that was really interesting to learn. [Kelly Altizer] Awesome. Thank you. Others, [participant], it looks like you're unmuted. [Speaker 3] I would just say, it was nice. I've been to the Museum of Middle Appalachians several years back and I really thought it was a lovely, lovely space. And [unintelligible] get me a couple of people who are involved with us. [Kelly Altizer] Great. Any others, any other new organizations? Surprising information, [Speaker 4]? Yeah, go ahead. [Speaker 4] Yeah. No. It was really great to listen to [Speaker 1] talked about the Christiansburg Institute. Like I had no idea about the history of the campus and whatnot and how it is being preserved and brought into history now so that people can acknowledge it. It was really cool so shout out to [Speaker 1]. [Kelly Altizer] That's great. Yeah, thank you. Any others who'd be willing to share before we transition? I do want to invite you. I did this didn't occur to me earlier, but since there are a number of organizations that might be new to others in the room. In the sign-in table, if you'd want to include a link of any kind with your name or your organization just for others in the room to, you know, be able to find you more easily. Please go ahead and do that. We definitely want to facilitate those connections where we're able. [participant], were you going to say something? [Speaker 5] No that was [Speaker 6]. [overlapping voices] [Speaker 6] I'm fairly new to the area. I'm a volunteer here at the museum. So all of the, all of the places where new to me that I heard of. And I really am very interested in preserving history. So I was excited to hear about the activists [participant]. And also the idea that I had no idea that the library and Christiansburg had a very big genealogy section, so I'm excited about that too. [Kelly Altizer] Thank you. Well, thanks everyone. That was a really great snapshot just to dive into a little bit about who the group is, we'll continue this conversation throughout our meetings and as well as later today. I'm going to turn it over now to Nathan to tell us a bit more about the project and you'll have the opportunity to ask questions of him as well before we continue our conversation. [Nathan Hall] Thank you, Kelly. And I just want to start again by saying, I really appreciate everyone being here. I was talking to Kelly a bit earlier today and one of my big anxieties of the last few weeks is maybe nobody will show up or maybe there's people I was supposed to invite that I didn't. And so I'm glad to arrive and see a fairly full room of people who are interested. But I also am aware that some people, based on the e-mail they saw, some people are wondering like why they were invited or what this is about, or they're interested in what the conversation, but why, people might be asking, why me, what do I have to offer this initiative? What, how can I be involved? So I think we've originally budgeted for me to talk about half an hour and I don't want you to listen to me for that long because I'd rather listen to you. But I do want to provide enough information so that you know what I'm trying to accomplish. But after that, I want to I want you to be the stars of the show and for me to sit back and learn what you do. So I'm trying to build a regional Digital Library, one that will allow people who are interested in the history and culture and even the current events of this region, to have a central location that will aggregate historical documents, images, stories, data, and bring it all to one place. But doing so without the university taking ownership of anyone's original content. So you might be part of an organization that you think what content, what is content? So you might be wondering why, Why did I even invite you? So the history of Southwestern Virginia is strongly tied to getting energy out of the ground and moving it someplace else. It's a history of energy, of transportation, of labor and of the environment. So the coal industry funded schools and hospitals, and museums and theaters, but it also left a permanent mark on the land and the people who live here. And so I first wanted to make this, this idea of the scope for the first steps of growth for this digital library. And so I invited you. We have, in this room, we have libraries and museums, historical societies here, along with conservationists and activists, because history didn't stop yesterday. We're living in it right now, and we're living in the story that we're telling. So if you have so much as a newsletter on your website, you are in my eyes for this purpose and institution with a collection. If you know someone who has stories or questions about local history, then you're connected to my audience. If you're working in a public library, you may or may not have special or unique collections or a genealogy or local history collection, and it may or may not be copyrighted material. We've got [participant] in the waiting room. And so it may or may not be copyrighted material, but you do have, as public libraries, you have programs and you have guest speakers and you know people in the region that might be interested in this project, either as a contributor or as a user. And how often does someone come into the library who wants to know where they can scan their old stuff and how often does someone ask a question about local history? In addition to that, if you're out there cleaning the rivers and the trails and taking pictures of damage from the pipeline development, then you have a connection to these issues and you might be able to share what you've documented of what's happening. And so I think historical societies and so forth, that, that connection might be a bit more obvious. But if it's not, raise your hand and I'll, I'll draw those dots too. So that kinda represents the broader scope of who's here. And so I'm hoping, oh, and then why use a digital library? Why not? Some other means. So you can put things on your own website. You could put, you don't even have to have a website. You can put things on Facebook and there's nothing wrong with doing those things. It's just that with Facebook, you don't necessarily own the content that you're putting on there anymore. You you're giving it to them and they're well, it's a good way to get your word out and share it with people who might be wanting to engage in that idea. It's not really an archival place, it's whatever you put in there, the files rename to something else. It's being used to sell you a product based on your interests. And there's, so there's this kind of commercial aspect to it. And also, if you put something in now, you might not be able to find it in six or eight months because they might have changed their algorithm or how the show things. I want to provide something that's a bit more sustainable, where you find something in a reliable place. With our digital library, we offer persistent links. So if you reorganize your website and somebody bookmarks something, well that's no longer the bookmark. So they click on their bookmark and then they're not finding it in the place that they originally found it three years ago. So we provide that, we provide digital preservation so that if something is deposited with us, we create, we replicate it at some of our consortial partners that provides it a bit of stability. So if we have some sort of massive data loss, we're able to rebuild it based on basically from these backups that we have elsewhere. We can also, you might have files that you created 10, 15 years ago that you can't open anymore because that version of the software doesn't exist. So we try to provide longevity and stability in the file formats that we use and we convert things into stable formats. And we, if you have documents that haven't been scanned, we have rather robust digitization service here that can scan external documents and return them to you. And then we can put them online and give you the digital files as well so that you can search through things digitally. Just depending on what, what's your preference. We have these kinds of resources. But it's also important to mention that Virginia Tech is kind of a large monolith in this region. Libraries like mine don't tend to collect things unless they're donated. But if giving collections to a large library of Virginia Tech, if small institutions in the area give away everything or what's most important to them, then they cease to exist as individual archives. And that diminishes the diversity and vitality of the communities in which they reside. And I'm trying to, I think become a, I've been aware in my career based on where I was working originally, but also there's a few other initiatives like this in the country, of an alternative model where the job of the library to support regional institutions. It's part of our mission to provide a means for you to share your collections online and put them together so that someone can go to one place and see all these collections together. But without you losing the, the collections that, they'd still be your ownership and your intellectual property. But we just provide a means to make them accessible. So this idea is, I've got colleagues who thinks it's a bad idea and I shouldn't be doing it. They think this is kind of threatening -- [Speaker 1] They're wrong. [Nathan Hall] Thanks, [speaker 1]. They've got so yeah, so this is the way I've come up in my career and that there's an alternative way to do this. And that just because I don't own something doesn't mean I can't preserve it, I can't appreciate it. And also the idea that we're not going to digitize something unless, unless you give it to us, that it's not worth, it's not valuable to study, it's not worthy of preservation unless it's mine. I reject that idea totally. So I want to provide these services to the community that I live in and to your community so that we can work together and build an archive that that shows our shared history and that we can all benefit from. So I wanna use Virginia Tech's resources that way. But I also recognize that Virginia Tech has a legacy. And there was some folks I was talking to you when I was doing the interviews and I've I've heard this anecdotally that, also somebody who reached out via the survey and said this, that it's hard to work with Virginia Tech because Virginia Tech only cares about its own growth, particularly money. And how can we trust Virginia Tech? So I've heard this over and over again. This is one of the reasons that I developed this project is to provide a different way for us to partner with you. The reason behind this call, the calls that follow is we're going to show you how we partner with people and what we've come up with. And to try to do this in the best way we know how. And this is an opportunity for you to provide feedback. We're not doing that part today, but one of the later sessions, we're going to show you the legal documents that were approved by legal counsel at Virginia Tech. And you get to comment on them. And I will advocate for you so we can make those changes. I can't promise change. I can just do my best to make this work because I want this to work. I'd like to use your feedback to make this something that you want to engage in, something that you want to talk about, something that you want to tell other people about. And I'll also toot Virginia Tech's horn a little bit with with [speaker 1] on the call. He was recently awarded a grant, almost a quarter million dollars from the Council on Library Information Resources, where they're going to digitize on-site, their collections on their, using , they're keeping almost all the money, I think Virginia Tech's getting like $2,000 or $4,000 just for Cloud Processing Charges recovery. And we're going to provide an online in this digital library. But they are doing all the digitization in-house. They're like they're doing, there's no Virginia Tech overhead because we're just a subcontract. So we've partnered on this grant together, but Christiansburg Institute is absolutely in control. And [speaker 1], if you want to put the press release in the chat or something, if I can lean on you to do that, that'd be great. So that's the kind of partnership I want to do. I want you to be in control and I want to help you. And then I'll talk about digital repatriation a little bit. So one of the, digital repatriation is an idea I've been interested in for a long time too and it's kind of the formal name for what I'm trying to do. One way is that there is, so we have things from all over the world and the great museums of the country, or at the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the British Museum. So they have things that are from Africa, from the Middle East and so forth. And one way to give it back is to digitize it and then return the original back to the country it was looted from 200 years ago. The other way is to digitize it for them and provide access to it. So those are the ideas I'm kind of interested in and that's just the formal name for what this is. What I'm trying to do is digital patriation. And finally, there's a wide variety of people here. I wrote this proposal in part because we've reached a place politically where we have abandoned civil discourse as a nation. And we can't even get back to it because we can't agree on what facts are or even what a set of criteria is for determining what makes something a fact. So we have difficult things to discuss potentially. There is the way that Virginia Tech treated black and indigenous people of color over the last 200 years is extremely problematic. And there's also people in this region who are very much tied to the coal industry that's shaped who they are. It's part of their identity. There's also people who feel like that It's really dam, that the coal industry is really damaged them. But we all have a shared history here that we can talk about. And I'm hoping that we can at least come together on what the shared history is and that it's important and that there's, that there's value in telling it and there's value in showing the entire thing. And that we'll all gain from it. So that's that's the hopefully, hopefully I didn't talk 30 minutes, but that's the overview of what I'm trying to do and why we're all here. [Mike Foreman] Thanks, Nathan. Great presentation and overview on the project and we'd like to spend a little while for all of you to sort of let that sink in and ask any questions and receive answers from Nathan on those. So which, anyone like to offer a question for Nathan at this point? Either raise your hand, really raise your hand or put it in the raised hand on Zoom if you'd like. Or put it in the chat, we'll monitor that as well. Yeah. [Speaker 2] So I think [unintelligible] [unintelligible], Nathan, that you have colleagues who don't agree with you on this approach. I guess the rationale that you offered is if we don't own it, it's not worth us putting our resources toward it. Do I have that correct? [Nathan Hall] That's correct. Yeah, that's that's the that's one traditional mentality. I'm being kind of reductive with it. I'll admit that, but but yeah, it's, it's it's kinda like Mickey Mouse branding. Like if, if we don't control our brand and if we don't protect our brand by suing people, how can we possibly maintain our rights over our intellectual property? I think it's really similar to that mentality. So we can't, the idea that we can't preserve something and convert it to new formats if we don't own it, is probably the more diplomatic way of putting it, but we can actually do that. We just did we just need permission. So generally what I do is ask for a license to preserve content. And the things that that entails is to provide access to it. [Speaker 2] And just broadly, and maybe we're jump, jumping the gun on what we're going to cover later. But in terms of the actual resources expended to digitize something, and have a digital record of it while the, the community or group retains physical ownership of the artifact or documents. That seems like not much out, you know, like I don't know what it takes to digitize something. Maybe it's hugely labor intensive and resource intensive, but it seems like a better than nothing option that you have a digital copy of it that can be viewed remotely or I guess I'm really struggling with why they would object. I mean, you sort of said it, that they want they want full ownership and control. [Nathan Hall] Yeah. So I've got, I don't know that I have a way to tell that other than with an anecdote. And that's, there have been institutions that have put, have, that have permanently lent material to Virginia Tech that we're responsible for hosting it and being a custodian for it in our physical archives. But, and this happened to be Norfolk Southern Railroad actually, so they provided a donation of a well, not a donation, they were hosting some other material here and someone was doing some research in that archive. And then it became used as evidence in a lawsuit against Norfolk Southern. Then Norfolk Southern didn't want to provide that access. They didn't want us to allow us to provide access anymore. So they wanted us, we're a research institution, we let people come in to use collections. And Norfolk Southern suddenly said like, we don't want people to use this. We don't want you to put this online. We want it to we want this to be restricted. Well, that's not really what we do. But since we didn't own it, it was, we were kind of put in a, and this is before my time here, but this is part of the rationale behind it. If we don't own it, then we, then someone else can make restrictions on it. That's one thing. Also, some people don't believe that a digital surrogate is as valuable as the real thing. And it's not, it's a different thing. But for the things that I wanna do with it, that doesn't matter. There's, I don't, I'm not tied, my work isn't tied to the physical copy. My work is tied to the digital copy. So if somebody here wants to donate their collections to Virginia Tech, that's, that's great. That's, that's totally their business. And there might be things that we can that my institution can do. But I don't think that should be the only way that your collection should be should be given access to the other resource that we can provide. [Mike Foreman] Thank you, Nathan. Thank you. Good set of questions. Are there other questions for Nathan out there? Who'd like to offer a question. [Speaker 7] Hi. [Mike Foreman] Yes, ma'am. [Speaker 7] Sorry, Nathan, how do you expect these collections to be used once you do have them digitized and available to the general public. [Nathan Hall] So the second largest source of Internet traffic, or the second largest category of internet traffic of all time is genealogy. So that'd be one way. In fact, I can, I'm going to share my screen real quickly. So this is unfortunately not a live site yet. Make sure I get the right site. [Speaker 7] I'm sorry if I jumped the gun. [Nathan Hall] No, not at all. See, I'm going to share the preview site of my, of my digital library. This is a pre-production site. I don't think this is accessible outside of outside of the Virginia Tech campus. But here's the Blacksburg High School yearbooks that we recently digitized. So we have going back to what year is this one? So we got 1947, 1934, and this one from 1925. So we've got like someone's families right here. And I could also go to, this isn't part of our theme of environment and energy and so forth, but I could go through this and show you like, the way, I'm sorry if this triggers anyone. But we've got 1956 which has this racist image on the front. And then I could show you about ten years later when you see a Chinese-American class president on that campus. And so we've got this history of how of how this, I mean that the having a Chinese-American class president doesn't mean that we beat racism of course, but it shows a certain amount of progress. And also, we can also look at later years beyond that and see how there's, what kinds of progress is still expected. But you can see prom dances in here. What you can see where the school integrated. You can see when there's African-American and Caucasian students dancing together. You can, if you want to get away from, if you wanna explore other parts of history, you could look at like, oh, here's the the photography club and they've got the wet lab. You could go to more recent year and see like they've got a computer club. And you can see the typography change. So you can look at all kinds of social trends just in this one collection. This is just one high school. And for a long time it was the white high school. So by having eventually the Christiansburg Institute yearbooks that would show a much, that would show a kind of a balanced picture of that part of that history that's not shown in that collection. We also have the Barter Theater archives here. So Barter Theater's in Abington, so we have all of their production posters and programs. Not all. We don't know how much, we don't know what we're missing, but we have production posters and programs going back to the 1930s. We have Taubman Museum of Art. We have just 21 items here, but we actually have digitized 2000 that are about to go online. So if I go into painting, you can zoom way in on it and get a really high resolution detail and really explore like the brush count. So we have got very sophisticated equipment for, for, for doing very visual collections, but we can also show very historical collections. If I go to another window, this is a different digital library, but it's using the same architecture on the backend. It's the same digital library, but it's kind of a different brand. This is a podcast digital library. So we've got basically interviews here that a colleague created and he's putting them here. So this could be a means, using this technology, we can do oral histories. So anyone who's interested in any of these kinds of things, it can look through and share a link to it, embed it in their own sites. They can research a topic. And hopefully there's, I think there's a lot of materials in here that we don't really have good metadata for, we don't have good documentation of. But by sharing them with a community of people might be able to fill in some of the details there. Oh, that's my grandfather or oh, I know what they're doing in that picture there. They're metal workers. So I envisione lots of ways of people engaging with this. [Mike Foreman] Thank you, Nathan, that was a great explanation and give them a given us some insight on some actual practical measures for this digital archive collection. Other last chance for questions, we still have a few minutes left. While you're thinking of questions, I'd like to introduce two other members of our UVA Institute for Engagement Negotiation staff. Ms. Chamie Valentine is here with us. She is a visiting scholar and helping us with numerous projects. Hi Chamie, thanks for being here. And our colleague, Yuki Zheng who's from Seattle, and was helping us with the technical elements of our program this afternoon. Thank you both for being here. Anybody else have any questions for Nathan? Okay. [Speaker 2] Mike, It looks like [participant] or an [participant] raise their hand. [Mike Foreman] Okay. Thank you. I missed that. Go ahead, please. [Speaker 8] Yeah. I'm just curious. Nathan, for small-role library like us, what, I mean, I just saw yearbooks and Lord knows we have yearbooks from Floyd County High School, but what other sorts of documents, texts, what have you, would you would you think would be of use to you from an organization like ours? [Nathan Hall] Like I was saying earlier, if, if your website has so much as like a newsletter or if you have minutes, like those are interesting to me. If you have like meeting minutes, where you're discussing the business of your organization and if it's something that's not confidential, then you can use this means to share it because that's where important decisions are made and you might not think like, why would someone be interested in, like us who's on the committee for redesign the strategic plan. But I've got behind me in these boxes over here, the Salem Fire Department's archives that are about ready to go into the Digitization Lab. And the first couple of things that gave me where the documents where they basically founded their charter and that showed the professionalization of their fire service from basically a bucket brigade to a firefighting department. And that was kind of at the same time as that was happening elsewhere in the country. So it's sort of a local event that has national resonance. So as I said earlier, we're making history today, we're living in the story that we're telling. Something that might not feel very consequential right now might be in 10 years or 20 years or 50 years. Or maybe it is now if you just connect with the right person. So with, aside from your books and photographs, you know that there's, there's sometimes just funny things that we find in our collections. So I've got, again, Salem Fire Department, there's a memo. Who's ever had a boss who like, put out a like, why did you put that at memo? That's totally pointless. So there's a memo from the chief that says like, it's from the 70s, like a memo about gossip. We need to stop gossip. It's like I'm sure it was solved after that. So it's just funny to see like, oh, this is a, this is a problem in every work environment. And so it's just like a local story for them. It just shows a bit of character. And that's a very uncontroversial and kinda just funny thing. But in the same collection, there's also pictures of parades from the 30s, well there's those parades on big floats right down Main Street, there's the Clansman, there's the Clansman marching. So that's, we're not suppressing that history. That's the way the place was and that's where all the prominent citizens were back then in this region. So that's just part of who we are and that's, that's our history. So anything that shows, anything that documents a time and place I think is important. [Mike Foreman] Thanks, Nathan. Good question. Thank you. [Nathan Hall] Did that help address your question? Does that just raised more? [Speaker 8] No that addressed it? Maybe a little. What about but it'searly days, we'll see how this goes. [Mike Foreman] Okay. Thank you. [Kelly Altizer] Sounds like a cautionary tale to be careful what you put in writing that might one day be archived and digitized. [Mike Foreman] That's right. [participant] Yeah. [Speaker 9] Particularly for historical societies, but also for schools and all, history is a record of change over time. And what this archive can do is in storing, for example, school curricula over time, you can see changes in interests, changes in what really matters to people of that time. And so documents that may seem innocuous at the time, the passage of time makes them more interesting and more informative. [Mike Foreman] Thanks, [speaker 9]. [Nathan Hall] Thank you, [speaker 9]. That's a great point. [Mike Foreman] Other comments or questions? Well, thank you all. Of course, the availability of questions for Nathan and others here today that are part of this project doesn't go away with just this end of the session. So please feel free to continue asking questions in the chat for today or for next Friday as well. [Nathan Hall] Actually, I have a question real quick. [Mike Foreman] Please. [Nathan Hall] Kind of a point of order one. I feel like some of you might have sent me names of people that maybe you were expecting to see here because I'm just worried if there's anyone who you think is, if you work with someone that you think meant to be here but but didn't get an invitation, but they're expecting one or anything like that. Is there are we missing any people today? I mean, for example, [speaker 9] you forwarded me [redacted] address a few hours ago. Did he get invited? [Speaker 9] They all got invited and I sent them reminders and the links. [Nathan Hall] Okay. All right. Okay. Well, as long as they had the opportunity, that's that's what I wanted to address. [Mike Foreman] Yes, and also [participant], Nathan, [participant] told us about one person who we'll, reach out to them. So an ever expanding group of people and we'll be able to get a lot more, I think, too. Thank you. Okay. What we'd like to do as it's 1:57 - [Kelly Altizer] I'm sorry, Mike, it looks like [speaker 10] has a last question. [Mike Foreman] Oh, I'm sorry. I'm missing. Thanks. Thanks. Please go ahead. [Speaker 10] One of the things that you mentioned was genealogical records and there's probably in whatever the license agreement that might be signed, there's almost a second-order in the sense that some of the genealogical records, for instance, that we may retain. in the Greene County Historical Society could be a little personal, so to speak. And so how one separates out one that might be in the public domain versus records that a family would not wish to have in the public domain. Not sure how one deals with that. I think we are facing a little bit of a crisis with some of our genealogical records in that one of the computers that storing on it is just running XP at this point, which is not that great. So just wondering how you might deal with first or second order information. [Nathan Hall] If I if I understand. And I think yeah, [speaker 1] put a comment in about setting up a policy that's a really good, is really important. But also, if, I don't want to put in necessarily everything that you own into a public archive. There needs to be some collection assessment of what's appropriate to go in. So you might say, I want to put it in these 20 documents, but the rest could be sensitive. And also we have a university policy that if someone's personal information goes in and personal information within a certain scope and definition, we'd have to take it down and then inform that person that we violated their privacy. And believe it or not, theses and dissertations used to have social security numbers printed right on them. So initially when Virginia Tech was digitizing its theses and dissertations, we had to like remove that information one at a time. At one point it was someone's job to have a stick of white out and they were like whiting out or a crossing out that information. So we have, so there's a process for when something like that, when something when there's a legal issue of exposing that information. If it's something that's not legal but about ethical, like we don't, we're not really comfortable with that. Or they don't they're not comfortable with that, then we really want to remove that before it goes in. So I would not want to take that. I wouldn't want to receive that. That said, we have the ability to suppress records. So if something goes in, but there's a challenge to it, like, Hey, this is a, this should be if it's, let's say it's a religious document or artifact associated with a tribe. That's a really strong case there for removing that, because that might be, maybe that it's only supposed to be available to a certain population, not even to the whole tribe, but just like a subgroup within the tribe. So we want to be able to maintain sort of ethical decorums and requirements and have protocols to deal with that. We have that technology available already in the digital library to suppress records. And, but just because something's mildly embarrassing, that's not, doesn't really, it might not come to this standard of like we have to take this down now. So we'd want to have a policy in advance. So ideally, you decide what's going in and what's not going in, and we come to that agreement in advance. And if something's questionable, then it's probably should stay out. [Speaker 9] Can I make one final comment. This is probably something to be addressed in the last session dealing with Memorandum of Understanding. But I would assume that one of the sections in it would address what happens if say, Historical Society sees that they had given you something to put up, that they didn't want there anymore because perhaps it violated privacy, that they would be able to ask to have that removed. [Nathan Hall] So if this is something that as [speaker 9] said, yeah, this comes up later in the sent of forums. And if it's not addressed appropriately in the documentation we have, then that would mean like to move forward with this initiative, I would want to work with you to come up with a protocol for how to mediate that situation later if that comes up. [Mike Foreman] Thanks, Nathan. Last chance in any questions, folks for right now. Okay. It's 2:02. We thought we'd give everybody 5 minutes for a bio break and we don't want to lose you on a Friday afternoon, so please come back. We're thinking five-minutes or come back about 02:07, if you would, and we'll pick up some additional conversation. Thank you so much for your interest and energy so far. See you in a minute. Good job, Nathan, on your presentation, sir. [Nathan Hall] Thank you. [Mike Foreman] Liked it. [Nathan Hall] I was trying to keep it as casual as possible. [Kelly Altizer] It's really cool to see all the yearbooks and stuff like that. That's awesome. [Mike Foreman] Yeah, I didn't realize that was even considered. Got my blinders on. [Mike Foreman] Yuki, Mr. Foreman here. How are you feeling? I wanted to ask? [Yuki Zheng] Hi Mr. Foreman. [Mike Foreman] Ms. Zheng, How are you feeling? [Yuki Zheng] I'm feeling good today. I think it should be my last real day feeling a little congested but I stopped coughing altogether. First couple of days were rough. [overlapping voices] [Mike Foreman] We were thinking about you. [Yuki Zheng] Hi Chamie, I think you're muted. [Chamie Valentine] I didn't want to interrupt Mike so. [Mike Foreman] You're not interrupting me. [Chamie Valentine] But I did want to say thank you. I'm glad to hear you're doing better. That's awesome. [Yuki Zheng] Thank you. Thank you, Chamie. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Two years without it. [Mike Foreman] Everybody gets sick. I know. [Chamie Valentine] But I hope it was a milder version. So they didn't have to. I think whoever got it first, I think suffered the greatest. I think that first version was hard. Yeah. [Mike Foreman] Checking into breakout rooms, Ms. Kelly, still want two larger rooms? [Kelly Altizer] Yep. And Yuki's got them organized. [Mike Foreman] Very good. [Kelly Altizer] I can explain the Google Doc once we're back and I will re-post it. [Mike Foreman] I think that'd be great if you would do that. If you're within earshot of us, have you'd come back on the screen, let us know you're back and we'll proceed with our next steps. Give you a few seconds. Come on back. [Kelly Altizer] Mike I was thinking that you and I would screen share the document in each of our groups. Does that seem right to you? [Mike Foreman] Sure. I don't mind doing that. [Kelly Altizer] I think we might have a few folks who can't see it or like pull it up on their end that way. Good. [Mike Foreman] Yuki, can you give me a co-hosting abilities if you haven't done so? Yuki Zheng] I think you are co-host. [Mike Foreman] Okay. [Yuki Zheng] I am Kelly, I'm making you a co-host. I don't think you are. [Speaker 11] This is [speaker 11] I've gone to the [unintelligible] with my phone. I may not be able to join the breakout group. I'll try. [Mike Foreman] Okay. Thank you, sir. [Speaker 11] But I left it on just for future reference when I get back. [Mike Foreman] Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We're going to proceed to our next conversation around this great project. And what we would like to do first is for Kelly to, again characterize the Google Doc and explain it for everybody and be available for any questions. Kelly. [Kelly Altizer] Yeah. So folks we'll be going back to the same Google doc that we use at the beginning, I've put the link in the chat. I'm going to describe how we're going to use it, but also to say if you can't pull it up on your end, It's okay. Don't worry, you're still gonna be able to participate. So I'll just do a quick snapshot of what we're gonna do. Mike and I will be leading each breakout group. It'll be two breakout groups. We'll be talking about the same questions in both groups, and Mike and I will each share our screens to show you the Google Doc, which will look like this. We're going to talk about these questions together and we will record the answers or responses you have. You will also be able to record. But to type in this document, you will need to have it open on your end and typing on your end. It can be confusing because it seems like you should be able to just click on this screen and type. But it's because I'm sharing my screen there. So only I am able to do that on this side. I know it can be kind of tricky, so we will also be available to just enter anything that you want to share. You don't have to type, but if you prefer that, you are absolutely able to pull it up on your side and enter responses there. Again, the link is in the chat. Are there any questions about that approach? Okay, Great. [Mike Foreman] Well, thank you all very much. Just in brief, we're going to begin an assessment, really a review of Nathan's opening remarks about the about this project and see if there are just any person, any information cause you concern what, obstacles are out there for you, and maybe what opportunities exist for the digital archive. I think Nathan did a great job of showing and explaining what is really truly possible with such an expanded use of a digital archive. And I thought it was great. We want to be sure that you are given the opportunity to talk about it and discuss any things that could be in your way of participating. So with that, Kelly, I think we would be ready to go to breakout rooms and begin our discussion. [Kelly Alitzer] Mike, what time did you want to come back, we're a little behind where we thought we'd be, you want to do to 02:35? [Mike Foreman] Yeah, exactly. I think 25 minutes should be plenty of time. [Kelly Altizer] Okay. So Yuki if you could bring us back at 02:35 and send us like a two-minute warning, that would be great. [Mike Foreman] Alright. [Kelly Altizer] Thank you. See you in the breakout rooms, everybody. [Kelly Altizer] Hello. Hello. I'm want to make sure we have everybody. So I know [speaker 11] said that he may not be able to join on his phone, but hopefully everyone else is in the room with us now. So I know that you all are probably tired of me sharing this link with you today, but I just wanted to put it right there if you'd like to access it on your end. And then I'm going to screen share. And I'm also going to record in this space. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. There's a male person right here who just scared me to death. Okay. I'm sorry. I apologize. I'm going to record in a room just like we were in the main meeting, but just to say that if you have any concerns and want to see something where you want me to turn off the recording. I'm absolutely happy to do that. Just send me a note or you can say in front of the group if you feel comfortable. I'm happy to do that anytime. So let me start that recording. I'm going to screen share the Google Doc that you all just saw me pull up in the main room. I also want to say if you're if you're looking for it on your end, it's on page four. It has my name at the top, Kelly Altizer. Okay. Can everyone see that? Okay. Okay. So I want to get started with this first question about what information causes you concern for this concept? Is there anything that you're thinking of that gives you pause or they would have reservations about sharing your information or anything else along the lines of the things that Nathan described earlier? [Nathan Hall] And now I can go away if you want me to if it's sans-Nathan. [Speaker 12] Just one thought on how would this co-exist with other digital archives that make sense? [Kelly Altizer] Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna add your notes as you say them, coexist with other. So can you, can you elaborate on that a little bit more just like how would they work together or can you? [Speaker 12] Yes, yes. For example I know that the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum, they have online archives. [Kelly Altizer] And I use and your, is your question about how their existing online archives might be integrated into a project like this? Or are you asking something different? [Speaker 12] I think that's what it is. I'm just trying to get a big picture for the other formative online collections out there. And how does, how does, how do these all interact with one another, where one picks up one leaves off, or do they duplicate when possible? [Kelly Altizer] Got it. Thank you. All right. So I'm hoping to capture your question in here. I would invite anyone anytime if I've done it incorrectly or left something out, please shut out incorrectly or do exactly like this on the screen. Any other things that cause you concern for this concept? [Speaker 12] Well it's not really a concern in another one, sorry, dominate here. But I know in Carroll County there are a lot of folks at, there's some incredible historic photographs that I need to use for research and so forth. But you have no idea where the originals are and there's no telling how many copies are out there, but would we be able to capture these even though we don't know who owns the originals? [Kelly Altizer] And I'm going to put example. That was Carroll County we're talking about? [Speaker 12] Well, there's some there's some well in that community, I just know that it was amazing all the people that have digital copies of something and they all claim is from their personal archives. Personal archives. Personal archives. But it will show me the original. No one can ever show me the original or where they got it from. Everybody just keeps copying things, but I'm afraid that these are not permanently preserved and eventually we may not have anything out there. [Kelly Altizer] Okay. Okay. [Speaker 12] So you, can things be preserved and with it being known, this is from an open, quote open source or unknown source. [Kelly Altizer] Yeah. Okay. Good question. Do others want to weigh in on anything along these lines or others that causes you concern or gives you pause about this concept? [Speaker 10] Similarly, as far as some photographs were concerned, we published Greene County Historical Society published an article in the Greene County Record, and we were unsure of the audit trail behind some of the photos and whether or not they should be in the public domain or not. In the end, we got permission for one, wasn't sure about the other. But it's, it's kinda has to do with copyright issues, I suppose. [Kelly Altizer] Okay. So copyright issues in that there are items in your possession where you might not actually own the copyright. So the question is, are you able to then present it for a project like this if you don't retain the copyright yourself, is that right? [Speaker 10] Pretty much so I should think. Yeah. [Kelly Altizer] Okay. All right. [Speaker 9] I think this also relates to copyright law. And at what point does the image come fall into the public domain? [Kelly Altizer] All right, thank you. Lots of questions around copyright. Any other copyright related questions that cause you concern? [Speaker 10] I guess my thought is that ideally, it would be wonderful to somehow be able to handle it in a very constructive manner. But we have a lot of photos. How do we make them accessible, usable, tag them, searchable, et cetera, et cetera, without stepping on toes, so to speak. [Kelly Altizer] Okay. So that sounds like a question of usability, right? It should be a product that people can actually tap into once it exists. But I want to get to the last piece. What's the concern about? Is it access or is it that people might not want those items to be searchable or is it something else? [Speaker 10] I'm not sure. It just may be that it was my photo. I gave it to the historical society. It wasn't for open publication, but perhaps for viewing and the confines of your using them. [Kelly Altizer] Okay. Okay. So sort of understanding the parameters of the gifts or materials that had been bequeathed to your organization and whether people would be uncomfortable with them being included in a project such as this. Does that capture it? [Speaker 10] Yes, I think so. [Kelly Altizer] Okay. [Speaker 12] For me, if someone uses material or images from this regional collection, you're developing a means of ensuring that it is properly referenced, or sourced. What would be the mechanism there? [Kelly Altizer] Okay. Proper reference. Actually sourcing here. I want to make sure I don't lose anything. So whether they can be included in a project like this, if the, if the original owner may or may not... [Speaker 12] Meta tags or something, something to kinda protect it. [Kely Altizer] Any others. In the vein of how materials will be used, what considerations might be needed for things to be safely included? [Speaker 12] Yes. [Kelly Altizer] I'm sorry, [speaker 9], are you going to say something? I couldn't tell if you did or not. No. Okay. Okay. Great. Well, we can we can move to the next question, but I know that this is important, so I do want to give space for anything we haven't heard of yet. Anybody who hasn't spoken, anything that is completely different than these issues that would give you, if you were thinking about including your materials in a project like this, are there any hold ups that you would want to talk through first? Okay. Well, I'll keep moving now to the next question. Nathan, did you want to say something? [Nathan Hall] Oh, it's just gonna say I'm gonna jump to the other room and just, just so I can get a sense of both conversations since I'm I'm here to listen today, so I will leave this one and hopefully come back in a bit. [Kelly Altizer] Great. Thanks. [Nathan Hall] Thank you all. [Kelly Altizer] So we'll move to the next question. I think you're muted. [Nathan Hall] I just came out of group two. Would you mind and shooting the overall group one? [Yuki Zheng] Yeah. No problem. [Mike Foreman] Please go ahead, [speaker 8]. [Speaker 8] No, Just one quick question. I guess really hoping that this might be a little maybe a little early on to ask this. But if we are sending, say, our patrons to the digital site, to your site to find digitized versions of our records, is it gonna be easy for them to find Floyd stuff, you know? [Mike Foreman] You mean regarding access to the web and navigating the site. And that kinda thing? [Speaker 8] Yeah, This is gonna be, it's gonna be, your digital collection is gonna be huge. And is locating information for a particular institution gonna be easy for say.. [Mike Foreman] Sure. I mean, Nathan has joined us. Nathan, would you like to respond to that more directly than I interpreting? Would that be okay? Yeah. If you heard the question. [Nathan Hall] The answer that I'm hoping to mostly be a listener today. Just tell me your preference. [Mike Foreman] I think it's fine for you to answer at [speaker 8's] remark. Yeah. [Nathan Hall] I just don't want this to be the Nathan show today. So yeah. So like in the example I showed earlier, every institution has its own sort of landing page. So there's that. And then that gives, you have a certain amount of control over what we say about your institution there, where it'd be your description of your own collections. And it would have a link to your site. It would have any sort of ownership statements or copyright statements that, or Terms of Use that you'd want to, the user to follow. [Speaker 8] Fantastic. You've answered my question completely already. [Nathan Hall] But what if somebody finds an object that's from the from your institution and they're not looking at it from within your institutional landing page there. They arrive there by searching some not just by institution but by topic. So if it's the history of this particular watering hole or riverbed and they're on it, but then they're navigating somehow they're in another county now or another collecting institutions. So basically if they do a search on a topic that, that's representing your collection, but in other collections as well. There would also be a way to refine the results. So like only show things from this institution are only show things from this range of dates. Only show images, only show audio. So there'll be these facets that allow you to progressively narrow the results into so it could be based on institutional equity, based on some other aspect. [Mike Foreman] Thank you. [overlapping voices] [Mike Foreman] I'm sorry. I'm interrupting you. Go ahead, please. [Speaker 8] I was just, that sounds great. [Mike Foreman] Thank you. All right. Thank you for your question. That's great. Let's move to question two. Which, what are the obstacles that are in place? Somebody who's already responded, "What level of resources does Tech have to get out in the community to gather information?" What other obstacles exist? Practical things that are in the way, not necessarily information in the console, but what's in the way of achieving this in the manner that Nathan described. Anyone want to offer something? [Speaker 7] I think the sheer number of institutions and our region that ought to be a partner, and ensuring that everyone gets kinda equal footing or gets any sort of collection representation, right? How do we, will ,do we as the institutions need to bring stuff to Virginia Tech and to Nathan, or is Nathan gonna come to us. And again, I'm here as a connector rather than anyone with a, with an actual collection at stake. But how do we make sure that we all have equal representation within the tool that Nathan and his team are building. [Mike Foreman] Thank you. Other comments on obstacles? Afternoon? Please. [Speaker 13] I'll say for us it's just staff capacity and we we we are only three people we're very active board but, you know, I mean, we had to shoot some emails around just to see if if any of the three of us could even attend these workshops even though we wanted to. Um, so, yeah. [Mike Foreman] Does the idea of staff and funding resources go together here. Are they separate obstacles? I mean, how do you how do you view that issue? Those issues? [Speaker 13] I think they are similar. I'm just what I was I'm thinking about as the amount of volunteer labor that we put into things. So like when funding runs out, we keep working anyway. [Mike Foreman] That's understandable. Thank you, [speaker 13]. [Speaker 14] And again, this is not a major concern or obstacle, but just questions that I have would be how long would we need to leave the physical archives with Nathan in order for them to get digitized. And what does that mean? And then going back to what [speaker 1] said, I also think that developing some trust, Nathan's had some conversations with us, and some of our board and I think the folks he's talked with have been really open. But we haven't had three years of conversations or whatever like [speaker 1] and his board has. So what how how is Nathan going to have the time and capacity to develop that level of trust with the major stakeholders in every community? I think that could, could take some time and I think it's kinda like just me telling the folks I report to that CIs comfortable with him and has built those levels of trust will help. So I don't think you're gonna it's gonna take three years, but but I do I do worry about Nathan's time being able to build those relationships with everybody. [Speaker 1] I think this is why I said when Nathan said earlier, his colleagues have a problem but they're wrong. That's why if they can understand the value of this approach, they will want to adopt it. They will see how directly affected communities who typically do not work with CWIs, predominantly white institutions, seeking out this kind of story. You'll see that, wait a minute. Oh my God. Yeah, I would not work with us for 20 years. What happened to us? Someone approached ethically and honestly and truthfully. That is invaluable and I would recommend many other institutions, to kind of [unintelligible] what's going on here. [Mike Foreman] Thank you. Okay. A last comment or two about obstacles. Anyone else who hasn't had a chance? Have you spoken to any obstacles for you, sir? Okay. Well, we'll go to question three with about 7 min left. We're right on time, right on schedule. Let's turn the, turn the situation or the question around and say what opportunities exist for the digital archive? What can, what we've talked about some benefits about widening the audience. And the first question, what else is out there about opportunities? Someone who's already answered, people are typing, that's great. First one is, "based on my experience. There is a ton of information out there that needs to be gathered and share to the archive." Agree with that. Other opportunities people would like to offer. [Speaker 7] I think the opportunity for so many organizations to be connected in one place digitally is huge because maybe I come looking for stuff from the Floyd genealogy side. But I find something from Patrick County that's useful. And now I'm on their website too. And the opportunity to dig in to that level of primary resources from our region, for researchers, for genealogists, for school kids. If there's a way to, um, I know that this is personally being built in a, in a model very similar to one that I have experience with back in Texas. And it's used all the time by the schools, so the opportunity to get all of them as primary resource information in front of kids so that they can actually learn from their history rather than, you know, the, the scrubbed narrative that they might be seeing in other learning opportunities. So I think that's invaluable. [Mike Foreman] Excellent. Thank you. Great response. Other opportunities people would like to talk about. Thank you for those who are typing as we go. Appreciate that very much. Just a few minutes left. [Speaker 14] I can type this in too, but I'll just say, it takes a lot of staff time or board time to coordinate with faculty in order to get student graduate level or undergrad students support. And so I see this as being a really nice resource to be able to get that kind of support without having to have a whole staff person dedicated or whatever to building and maintaining those relationships. I think it would also be nice because it seems like it would extend beyond semesters, which often those types of relationships are difficult to maintain. So I'm really excited about this as a way to expand and build on university community partnerships. [Mike Foreman] Right. Thank you. Yeah, if you would type that in, that'd be great for me. Super. Yeah, I'm thinking the traveling roadshow with Nathan staff or somebody, you know, we're taking a big van around with a huge piece of digital digital equipment in it. And they just stay in one place for awhile. And I could see that as, in my head anyway. Thank you all. Another opportunity or two for for describing any opportunities you see that's not been listed already. [Speaker 7] So not to monopolize, not to monopolize. But I know the MFRL has digitized a bunch of the Christiansburg High School yearbooks. And we were going to build an online, a tool to get into them online. And that never came to pass because we don't have the staff capacity for that. So this gives folks like us, who might have the desire and perhaps even the tools, but not the time. A place to put the things that need to be out there that we think are valuable in order to be out there. It will. I think this will save our organizations time and energy for sure. [Mike Foreman] Right. Thank you. Okay. 2:33, we should get a message pretty quickly about going back to the room at 2:35. If you haven't already, last chance on any of the questions now, questions again, or what information causes you concern? What obstacles or opportunities? Anything else come to mind that you didn't have a chance to say before? [participant] you'd mentioned the legal documents I saw in the chat or the messages, you have, anything else you'd like to expand upon on that issue? [Speaker 15] No. I think again, Nathan's explanation is reassuring, but the devil is always in the details and the legal documents don't come from him. They come from legal counsel for the university. [Mike Foreman] Yes. [Speaker 15] I would say there's a real need for those to be scrutinized pretty pretty closely to make sure that there's just a clear understanding and that it's what's in there is everybody can live with. [Nathan Hall] That is maybe you saw in the in the info guide on the sessions and that's the focus of the third session. But there's no reason why I can't share it in advance for preliminary examination because it's all legalese. I used to have a one-page Memorandum of Understanding that was in my own language and I was told to stop using that because I was told I'm not a signatory authority because my originally my associate dean said you can sign off on these, Nathan, but now the dean can't even unless we have this like university provided one. And it took us like one or two years to get that, part of it was due to COVID and also staffing the legal office, but it took a long time to get that approved and changing it will take a long time too. So I want to be really clear about that and just transparent about the process. You're right. I don't get to change it, but I can-- [Speaker 15] That's why I think, you know, being able to see it early on, you know, before people get excited and invest time and energy, you know. And, you know, maybe there's a need for organizations to have their own legal folks take a look at it? [Nathan Hall] Absolutely. [Speaker 15] Again, if nothing-- [Kelly Altizer] Hi. Welcome back, everyone. I think we have oh, I was like we don't have Mike Foreman, but he's just moved on the screen. There you are, Mike. Mike, you're muted. It's not a Zoom meeting unless you got to tell someone they're muted. [Mike Foreman] More than once. I was caught in Zoom, thank you Kelly very much. I had a great session in my breakout room and some great points came forward. Kelly, I hope yours was good too. Would you like to begin with a few highlights of your session, Kelly? [Kelly Altizer] Yeah. So it sounds like there's lots of opportunity, but just a few things that our folks noted that we'd like to navigate. Those include issues of capacity for organizations that might have materials available that they could contribute, a lot of, recognizing that a lot of organizations don't necessarily have the staff or volunteer capacity to sort through what those might be and then just issues of transporting it to Virginia Tech and those types of things. We also talked a bit about copyright issues. And then in the case of items that had been gifted, for example, to a historical society, what the original gifter might feel comfortable with in terms of what material is shared. So navigating some of those things, but we did, you know, there are lots of opportunities available, particularly in terms of making things searchable. That could be beneficial to a lot of the regions where does material can be found, as you all know, isn't necessarily accessible and searchable to the local folk who might find real benefit from it. So to that end, we see a lot of opportunity and making it accessible and searchable. Just a snapshot of my group though. [Mike Foreman] Yeah, thanks Kelly. From my group I actually had some slightly different things which is great to have a wide spectrum of ideas coming forward. For group one and the information what might cause you concern, there was some concern expressed around confusion in the community like the local historical society or local library has a digital archive already existing. And one is completed at Virginia Tech. How will the user know which one to go to or which one to use? Do they kinda keep loyal and a sense of the local archive or Virginia Tech one offers a much broader perspective. So there's just a little bit of concern around that issue. Also, the links between the two toggling between the two resources. Would it be easy once you get into, say, you're searching on a topic versus a location of the source. And both sources come up as possible ways to obtain information. There may be a little bit of more than, one path might be easier than the other and the personal choose the past, so leave the other one behind. It's a little bit of understanding about that would be helpful moving forward, though not a major concern as was expressed by the person. It should be easy, easy to do that. Let me see. What else does the information causes concern? The large institutions and the ability for Virginia Tech to sort of go slow, build relationships among all these partners, potential partners, and be able to have that necessary trust to retrieve the digital archive, that existing original archive and be able to use it and give it back kind of an approach. We want to have that relationship established. I think that's a really good point to be made. To get around this website issued is description around good landing pages, terms of use are clear. So when the relationship is established and we get, begin to start the process that it's clear the user can obtain it from either place and understand where it's coming from. Second question about what might be some obstacles. One obstacle here was the sheer number of places that information can be obtained, right? How was Virginia Tech and Nathan and staff and all the staff these other places it's going to be able to to get together and be able to provide all the information is just a large number to deal with maybe just it's just a long, a very long-term project. It's never going to end necessarily. So, so that ideas come forth as a potential obstacle. The idea that the, your local organizations don't have the staff to sort of contribute much to the effort. Or maybe the volunteers that are at this local organization may not be able to provide it as well was an obstacle that was noted in my group. Again, the idea of Native Americans and how to represent them and they were invited to this meeting and we hopefully have some representation at future meetings from tribes around the Commonwealth. Mostly the obstacle is the legal documents regarding the MOU and other things. We certainly want to read those and scrutinize them and feel safe and comfortable with those as that represents the agreement for this kind of work. Lastly on opportunities. It offers an expanding of information source on the Southwest Virginia has rich heritage, right? I know through our work at IEN, Southwest Virginia, celebrated in many, many respects but also tends to be the ones they ignored might be a strong, strong, too strong a word, but it gets neglected and we really have to. So this particular project offers a great opportunity to expand the knowledge, the wealth of knowledge for Southwest Virginia. The idea of putting this kind of information in front of young people while in school and be able to use research efforts. This is just a wonderful, wonderful opportunity that perhaps visiting a local historical society perhaps is not easy for some, you know, getting there or being able to access it, but Virginia Tech could provide a much wider and broader access for folks. Um, let's see what else. The idea around increasing opportunity for African-Americans and other communities to get their history out and about for everyone to learn and use is really an important element. So I'll stop there and Kelly, perhaps we'll go back to the big room and talk it out a little bit. [Kelly Altizer] Yeah, that sounds great. [Mike Foreman] So you've heard from Kelly and I a little bit about what we heard in our breakout rooms. Would anybody like to offer additional points or conversation around what might be information, obstacles, or opportunities. [Speaker 10] Got a question. Are you all coordinating your efforts with JMU? They've got a project called Histories Along the Blue Ridge where there in particular looking at the families that were moved out of the park and going into the various courthouses to obtain many of those documents. So question is, are you coordinating with JMU on that effort? [Mike Foreman] Nathan for you? [Nathan Hall] Yeah. The answer is no. I wasn't aware of this initiative until we talked on the phone yesterday afternoon. So there's there's a few other efforts that where there might be, there's been oral history projects and sometimes a history professor at one institution or another will be doing, will be working with individual institutions or a collection of institutions. The scope is a bit different. They're probably because this project here is in a fairly nascent stage. I'm sure the person at JMU or the people at JMU that are involved in that program, I'm sure they're not even aware of what I'm doing here. So there's no coordination. I hope they'll be aware of it someday. I hope there's a chance to collaborate. I think I'm hoping to get some more collections online that so that eventually, you know where it's easy to see this and easy to define what we're doing. I think a question from [speaker 16], maybe. [Speaker 16] Yes, thank you. That brings up a good point. I think that that would be the Skyline Drive and that's more Western Virginia. So have we defined geographically, what is Southwest Virginia, our focal point? [Speaker 10] A question would then become, should Greene County be incorporated in your project? [Nathan Hall] So for the purposes of writing a grant proposal, I've put some scoping into it, but in reality, I'm, I'm not I don't really like drawing lines and borders for who all we work with. But I think they're also, we do want to achieve the goals of what I listed earlier about about topically and geographically. So if there's a vague connection I'm in favor of working with them. It might not be within the confines of the grant, it might be within the confines of what my job here is in this room beyond, beyond working on a grant project. And that is still involves the building a digital library. But if it's outside of Virginia, West Virginia, or the Blue Ridge or Shenandoah, then it's probably a bit more out of scope. Crewe, Virginia is a little town somewhere, I think in Piedmont. Someone on their town council was a public administration grad student here and he started bringing out his city council minutes. And so those. We've got several volumes of those that have been digitized. It's not Southwestern Virginia by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still they're interested in working with us, so we don't have those online yet. But that's yeah. So I'm not really, in practice, I'm not really good at at narrowing my scope. I'm I'm I try to be as inclusive as possible. [Speaker 16] I'm just speaking more, I guess more provincially. A lot of times we feel we're always left out and so forth. Then something like this I saw the title Southwest Virginia and it kind of gives us a distinct regional identity. A strength there. [Mike Foreman] Great point, [speaker 16]. Thank you. [overlapping voices] [Speaker10] I actually wanted to say something about. I think to some degree your project would be a very good complement to what we're doing, in essence, on the Shenandoah National Park. Certainly very different sources because we go into courthouses and court documents and the like. [Mike Foreman] Thank you, [speaker 10]. Other comments or questions based on our last breakout room session, anybody wanted to contribute anything? Thank you all for that. And for that session. We have one more task for today. And anytime, almost anytime to IEN is involved with a project such as this are sort of group process thinking we like to develop among the participants what we consider a shared goal statement. We want to try to bring the group together to reach consensus on what we believe is the shared goal for this project. So what we'd like to try to do is examine and name, identify some key words that you believe would be in a statement that would be considered a goal statement like, for example, develop a shared digital archive at Virginia Tech for wide use amongst the Commonwealth citizens. Just a very vague and simple statement as an example. What we would like to try to do is either verbally or in the chat, if you would think in your mind just for a couple of minutes. We only have a few minutes for this as we approach the end of our session today, put it in the chat. What you believe are some key words that might, might be in a shared goal statement for a project like this. That's what we would like for you to do in the chat and also accepting any verbal comments based on your last almost 2 hours of discussion with Nathan and your rest of your colleagues. If someone would want to say something verbally or identify even if it's not a single word but a phrase or sentence. We'd love to hear it. Anybody? [Speaker 16] Something I just thought of right now that kind of connects all of us in Greene County in the Shenandoah National Park would be the Blue Ridge. [Mike Foreman] Okay. [Speaker 16] Because a lot of Southwest Virginia, even though they're not technically the Blue Ridge, they still identify with it. So that could be a connector for all of us. [Mike Foreman] Ok. So in essence, it's the natural resource that you're all working in and around, right? [Speaker 16] The physical landscape, which is cultural landscape. Yes. [Mike Foreman] Good. [Speaker 8] say access information, wants to be free. Thank you very much. Perfect. Others in the chat or verbally? We loved to some verbal comments before the end of the day. [Speaker 10] I would I would put less of the emphasis on Virginia Tech as owner, but more as a facilitator of shared history. I mean, we were working with JMU. I've been working with the Library of Virginia on the Virginia Chronicle issue. There's so much to be shared across boundaries. Clearly Virginia Chronicle has to do with published articles that are clearly in the public domain after a certain period of time. The JMU issue has to do with collecting a lot of court documents. And it seems like Virginia Tech is wanting to incorporate and share things that are outside of those two things. So I'd say facilitate a shared history would be something that I would champion. [Mike Foreman] Right. Kelly has captured that [speaker 10], thank you so much. Last comment on keywords for a shared goal. We've got a bunch in the chat. We recording this, of course. So we've got your comments. Any last comments on this? Any last thoughts? [Speaker 4]? [Speaker 13], anybody want to offer anything? [Speaker 16] I was just say Western Virginia could be another keyword to. [Mike Foreman] Yeah, sure. [Speaker 16] And I'm not sure if it came up during the conversations earlier, but we're losing a lot of local newspapers throughout. Everywhere. This would be a good chance to try and get those scan and collected before they're gone. [Mike Foreman] Good point. Yeah. I'm one to like to hold the newspaper in my hand and read it myself to have it. So I appreciate that very much. Thank you. We'll now begin, oh go ahead, [speaker 9]. [Speaker 9] I was just thinking, if we've got more than one organization developing resources for Virginia, it might be useful if they got together and developed the shared user interface. And they could have links to each of the organizations on their common shared interface that make them all more accessible to the public. [Mike Foreman] It's great idea, [speaker 9]. Thank you. There seems to be more synergy in this effort around the state than I I thought there was. So that's a great point to make. Thank you. Well, let's begin to close down for the day. We'd like to talk about next steps and next week a little bit. As you are aware, if you've been looking at our emails, we're going to again repeat this next Friday, from 1-3. The same sort of methodology. We're just gonna begin to dive deeper. And I believe we're going to talk about the MOU a little bit next week, if I'm not mistaken, Nathan, is that our point next week, Kelly. So that is when anybody have any issues or questions that a we can, you can send us your other colleagues that were not here today. We'll double-check and make sure that we're getting invited them to the overall workshop series. Make sure they have an opportunity to participate. Kelly, would you like to add anything? [Kelly Altizer] Yeah. Just to say that if you have questions about the projects or specifics, those can go to Nathan. If you have questions about the meetings, the process of the meetings, any of those types of logistical questions, you should feel free to send them to Mike and myself. I'll put our e-mail addresses in the chat. Nathan, I don't know yours off the top of my head. So if you could add it after if you want to add that in there. Then I'm going to also put a link in the chat to the survey which you've hopefully received via e-mail from me. If you haven't yet, it's still open. I know the e-mail you received said it would close on the 19th, but we're going to leave it open recognizing that there are folks who will be added into the next meeting. So if you haven't had a chance yet, please fill it out. And we want to make sure that we get your perspective captured. [Nathan Hall] And I believe I think the MOU is the third week. Mike and next week we're doing stakeholder requirements. So what participants need in a functional digital archive? What, what kind of. So someone mentioned earlier like a way to find content from their institution and amongst all the others so that they're not too diluted. So define for example technical requirements and sort of branding requirements, that kind of thing. Yeah. [Mike Foreman] Thank you, Nathan also. Yes, That's wonderful. Thank you for correcting me. I apologize for the error. Nathan, would you like to offer some final closing remarks for our first session, Sir? [Nathan Hall] I'm so incredibly grateful for the time that people put in and engagement. As I said, I've kind of this isn't exactly what I expected when I wrote the grant and we were supposed to be meeting in person at the Inn at Virginia Tech for two days and then rather than spread across five weeks with the screen. So there's less opportunity here for the, for, it's certainly less intimate and there's less opportunity for, for the informal engagement. But I'm glad I'm glad you're able to bring what you could. With the limitations of the format. I'm grateful to Mike and Kelly and Yuki for facilitating. So I look forward to hearing more about this and hearing more about the kind of challenges and obstacles people see because I'm hoping to build something that addresses those. And thank you for your frankness too. [Mike Foreman] Yeah. Thank you, Nathan so much. We'll let you all go and have a good rest of the day and weekend. And for those IEN staff and Virginia Tech staff want to stay on and chit-chat a little bit. We certainly can do that, but you all have a great weekend and thank you so much for energy and passion this afternoon. [Kelly Altizer] Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. [Mike Foreman] Have a good day and weekend.